Monday, November 25, 2013

The Dirties

What is a great movie? A great
movie is a motion picture that sets out to do something new in its genre and not
only achieves its goal but also manages to surpass your expectations and set a
new benchmark in said genre. Following that definition, the Canadian indie film
The Dirties is a truly great film and
a near masterpiece.

Written, directed, edited and
starring newbie filmmaker Matt Johnson and Owen Williams, The Dirties effortlessly mashes together dark comedy, social
commentary, drama, bromance and Hollywood all with a distinctly meta flavor.
The film takes on the risqué subject of gun control and school shootings in
America and does it in a way you won’t believe until you see it. We’ve had films
like Gus Van Sant’s Elephant and We need to talk about Kevin, which were
moving, shattering dramas, but The
Dirties approaches the subject with a funny bone. This
a comedy about two guys who plan a school shooting and making a film out of it. On
paper making or watching a dark comedy such as this seems like a morally
reprehensible act, and the fact that Johnson managed to pull it off in his
bizarre comedic way is evidence of the film’s staggering achievement.

The Dirties won the Grand Jury trophy at this year’s Slamdance Film
fest and it deserves a hell of a lot more than that. It’s a found footage film
within a film within a film, and it becomes more and more arresting as it
unfolds. Matt and Owen play themselves, or at least a younger version of their
own selves - they’re high school kids,
childhood friends and also crazed movie geeks obsessed with pop culture and
filmmaking. Their school project, a harmless short film becomes a horror movie when
Matt muses over how ‘real’, ‘awesome’ and ‘path breaking’ it will be if they
actually shot a few people in their school and filmed it.

The entire film ends up as a
found footage movie about these two trying to make a found footage film. If
that isn’t meta enough, there is a scene in The
Dirties where Matt and Owen’s film instructor forces them to make cuts in
their profanity laden footage to make it PG-13, and Matt decides to actually
kill some people. It’s a brilliant, cheeky stab at the Hollywood studio system
which forces filmmakers to turn their art into commercialized populist
balderdash. Another fascinating aspect of the film is that it brings out the
dark side of Matt’s movie geekiness – he loves cinema so much and he’s so obsessed
with movies he slowly begins to lose his grip on reality. In one of the best
scenes in the film, Owen, by now clearly shocked by Matt’s increasingly bizarre
behavior berates him for living his life as if being in a movie. It’s a moving,
poignant scene that throws in a gauntlet or two towards filmmakers and writers
lost in objectivity, and like the majority of the movie it’s never been done
before.

The Dirties also really gets what movie buffs are about. Like any
hardcore movie nerd Matt and Owen (in the film) consume movies like water –
they make references to Irreversible,
Being John Malkovich, Back to the future, Star Wars and dozens of other
films in any casual conversation. Johnson also films these scenes without being
ostentatious, thus giving a relatable vibe to them. He also very subtly nails
the psychological aspect of it where Matt’s breakdown finally occurs and,
instead of making pop culture
references, he starts trying to become
a pop culture icon.

Stuff like this wouldn’t have been possible without some excellent
acting from the cast. In a found footage film one is constantly aware of either
the genuine fakeness or the fake ingenuity of the film, but in The Dirties the acting is so good it
fills the void between both scenarios and lets you accept the film for the way
you want it to. If your first impression of The
Dirties is of a meta film within a film, you’ll go along with the flow; if
you think it’s just a movie shot with a handheld camera, you’ll still appreciate
its style. I can’t think of a single found footage movie in recent times that
managed to pull you away from its gimmicky technicality and let you keep your
focus on the story.

With the Sandy Hook incident in
the recent past and the pang of Columbine still ringing in the ears The Dirties does a tremendous job of rubbishing
the perceived reasons for the incidents and establishing how society glosses over
the true nature of youth psychology. Johnson makes it a point to muse that
school shootouts are not as simplistic as a reaction to violence in movies. The
media always digs out the recent past of the shooters without really delving
into their lives and trying to understand what made them resort to such violent
behavior, and The Dirties ends at the
exact point where the media would start excavating. Little things like these
make The Dirties a great movie and
Johnson an astute observer and a giant talent, and I won’t be surprised if more
and more movies in the future are made this way.